Shimmer: A Novel

by Passarella, John

  Ambrose chuckled and patted Fallon on the arm. “Ah! The take-charge type. Good. That will serve you well, Ms. Maguire.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Fallon said, grinning. “Logan was being chivalrous. And, please, call me Fallon.”

  “If you’ll call me Ambrose,” he said and she nodded agreement. “You wish to learn more about yourself?”

  Fallon nodded hesitantly. “I want to know what’s happening.”

  “I sense layers within you, young lady,” Ambrose said. “More than you know.”

  “That’s me, the Onion Queen,” she said dismissively.

  Ambrose ignored the quip and raised his hands to either side of her head and then, almost as an afterthought, asked, “May I?”

  Fallon looked from his left hand to his right and back again. “Depends,” she said. “What are you proposing?”

  “He wants to perform a kind of psychic phrenology,” Liana provided. She crossed the room, sat in one of the burgundy armchairs, and folded her hands in her lap.

  Fallon addressed Ambrose. “You want to be psychic friends?”

  “Phrenology,” Ambrose said, hands still poised mid-air.

  “He wants to read you,” Logan explained. “By feeling the shape of your skull.” He grinned wryly. “To see if you’re ripe.”

  Fallon looked at Ambrose uncertainly. “I bet you’re giddy in the produce aisle.”

  “I’m quite serious about this.”

  “Will it hurt?”

  “I’d be surprised if you experienced any pain.”

  “Not quite the assurance I was hoping for,” Fallon said. “But… okay.”

  “Thank you,” Ambrose said and gently placed his fingertips on either side of her scalp, just above her forehead.

  “Wait,” Fallon said. “You don’t read minds, do you?”

  “Certainly not through my fingertips,” Ambrose said. “Rest assured, there is nothing emotionally, physically, or psychically invasive about this… procedure.”

  “Then… how does it work?”

  “Wish I knew,” Ambrose admitted with a twinkle in his eye. “May I proceed?” She nodded. After taking a deep breath, Ambrose closed his eyes in concentration. Every few seconds he inched his fingers across her head, a fraction of an inch at a time, until they had crossed over the crown and descended to the nape of her neck. With a sigh, he dropped his hands to his sides, opened his eyes and leveled his watery blue gaze at her again. “Interesting,” he said softly. “Extremely interesting.”

  Her scalp tingled. She resisted the urge to press her own palms against her head, but couldn’t suppress the shudder that rippled down her spine. “Care to share?”

  He scratched the gray stubble on his jaw for a thoughtful few moments, then turned his gaze to Logan. “First, tell me the circumstances of your meeting.”

  Logan mentioned that he’d sensed a connection with her across a crowded classroom and initiated contact. Fallon frowned at him, perturbed. As if I’m an extraterrestrial life form. She decided to interrupt. “I thought Logan looked familiar, but couldn’t figure out how or why. Later, I found his portrait in my dream journal. An image I drew two weeks ago. Two weeks before meeting him for the first time today.”

  “Hmm,” Ambrose said. “Prescient dreaming. Go on.”

  Logan snapped his fingers. “She said that Barrett looked strange.”

  “Blurry,” Fallon corrected. “Hot… but blurry.”

  “Well, the ‘hot’ part wasn’t germane,” Logan said, showing mild resentment.

  “Depends on the context, hot shot,” she said, smiling. “And on who’s initiating contact.”

  Ignoring their playful verbal jabs at each other, Ambrose nodded seriously. “A sensitive. I suspected as much. And yet, there is more. Much more.”

  “More what?” Fallon asked.

  “Potential.”

  “Meaning, what? I have a very big head?”

  “A most unusual head,” Ambrose said. “Not the outside, but what I sense within. Something special.” He turned to Logan. “She’s a wonderful find, Logan.”

  “I’m eighteen,” Fallon said angrily. “Not some ancient artifact on display in a museum. Can you guys stop talking about me as if I weren’t here?”

  “I’m sorry, Fallon,” Ambrose said graciously. “Please forgive us for being… unusual. In umbra ambulamus.”

  “Run that by me again.”

  “It’s Latin,” Logan explained. “He said, ‘We walk in shadows.’”

  Ambrose deposited himself in the armchair beside Liana and beamed at Fallon. “Ingenium ad magnitudinem habemus,” he said, shaking his head in incredulity. “I say that a lot around here, but with you…”

  Fallon frowned again. “This stuff is confusing enough in my native tongue. Could you…?” She turned to Logan for help.

  “‘We have the capacity for greatness,’” Logan translated. “One of Ambrose’s short but sweet pep talks.”

  Ambrose pointed at Fallon. “With you, my dear, it is not, as Logan says, a pep talk. It is, rather, a prediction. I sense two things about you, Fallon Maguire. First, that you are unbound. Second, that you may be a… catalyst for our kind.”

  “What does that mean… exactly?” Fallon asked. Without realizing it, she had assumed a defensive posture, arms crossed, leaning back from the conversation. But she couldn’t decide if she was afraid to believe what the old man had to say, or more afraid not to believe him. Maybe ignorance really is bliss, she thought nervously. Battling her ambivalence, she placed her hands on her hips and hoped the not-so-subtle change in body language made her appear more self-assured… if she could somehow manage to stop nibbling at her lower lip for five consecutive seconds. Note to self: forget career as professional poker player.

  Ambrose steepled his fingers. “Let me ask you a question.”

  “Sure,” Fallon said with a wry grin. “Why not?”

  “Do you believe something extraordinary has happened?”

  “Here?”

  “With your dream journal?”

  Fallon glanced at Logan, not for guidance or confirmation, but for assurance. Remembering the face she had drawn. The face she’d seen in one of her dreams. And now, looking at his face and making the mental side-by-side comparison. Slowly, she nodded. “Unusual.”

  “Fair enough,” Ambrose said. “Can you rule out coincidence?”

  “An impartial observer or—?”

  “You,” Ambrose said quickly, interrupting. “In your mind. There are no impartial observers here.”

  “No,” Fallon said. “Not coincidence. It’s more than that.”

  “Good,” Ambrose said. “That is the first step. You see, Walkers don’t believe in coincidence.”

  She flashed another look at Logan and smiled. “So I’ve heard.”

  “Fallon, before you can accept,” he said, “you must believe.”

  “What must I accept?”

  “Your potential, of course,” Ambrose said. “I would be lying if I told you I knew what that potential was. I sense that it is there, that it is vast, but not what shape it may take.”

  “You said I was unbound, and a catalyst,” Fallon reminded him. “That has to mean something.”

  “Hmm,” Ambrose said as he looked off into the distance.

  He’s hiding something, Fallon realized. But what? And why?

  Liana spoke softly. “Tell her, Ambrose. The child has a right to know.”

  “I’m not a child,” Fallon said defensively. She sighed. So much for casual, self-assurance. “Please. I mean, stop treating me like a child, okay? I want to know—I need to know what’s happening to me.”

  Logan stepped forward. “It’s because her—”

  Fallon grabbed his arm and glared a warning at him. “No, Logan. Don’t try to protect me. I’m not made of glass, okay?” I’m not my mother. “Just—let him speak.”

  Ambrose nodded. “Unbound is how we speak of one of our kind who has no… limitations.”

&nb
sp; “Somebody with potential.”

  “Yes,” Ambrose said. “In the truest sense of the world. Has Logan told you he is a douser?”

  Fallon nodded. “Yes. And that Barrett is hyperactive.”

  “He has hyperacuity and hyperaesthesia,” Ambrose corrected. “These are abilities that manifest in our line. Paranormal talents, so to speak.”

  “Like my prescient dreaming?”

  “Exactly,” Ambrose said. “Each of us Walkers has one or two, sometimes three of these talents. They manifest at different times in our life. At birth, or adolescence, or well into our adult years. And there are many triggers, including hormones, stress, trauma, or simply maturation.”

  “Go on.”

  “Whatever the nature of our talents, we also have limits,” Ambrose said. “For example, Barrett is not a douser. And probably never will be.” He wagged at finger at Fallon. “With you, however, none of this is certain. I sense that you have no such limitations.”

  “I might one day be a douser?”

  Ambrose shrugged. “Who knows?” he said. “But I would be a fool to bet against it. You are unbound.”

  “A wild card,” Logan said admiringly. “You could become… anything.”

  She frowned. “The prescient dreaming is freaky enough, thanks.”

  “And yet, despite your unbound nature, it is also possible that prescient dreaming is the only talent you will ever manifest.”

  “You make me sound like a lump of clay.”

  “Who knows what wondrous form that lump of clay might take in the hands of a skilled artist?”

  Fallon glanced sidelong at Logan. “No fondling wisecracks, mister!”

  Logan shrugged with a ‘Who, me?’ look of innocence.

  “You are the clay and the artist, Fallon,” Ambrose said. “No one else. You will shape yourself by the life you lead and the choices you make.”

  “What if I don’t want any of it?”

  Ambrose smiled benignly. “Ah, but it is never that simple. There is no lever to pull one way or the other. Regardless of what you want, or think you want, whatever happens will happen. What you need, is another matter. And what you do with what you have makes all the difference in the world.”

  “You’re a walking, talking fortune cookie.”

  “I’ve been called worse.”

  “What about that other thing?” Fallon asked. “You called me a catalyst.”

  “An agent of change and reaction,” Ambrose said. “Logan called you a wild card, and there is some truth in that analogy. The root of potential is potent. There is that in you. While you yourself are unbound, I believe you have the potential—there’s that word again—to interact with our kind, to… shift our boundaries.”

  “Does that mean I could make you—or Logan—unbound also?”

  “No, I do not believe that is possible,” Ambrose said. “We are what we are and what we may yet become, but not that which is not within our nature. But I sense that you are capable of becoming one of those life triggers I mentioned earlier. In essence, you may be an accelerant for our own potential. Perhaps even a proximity booster.”

  “The kiss…” Fallon said, then fell silent.

  “Kiss?” Liana asked, looking back and forth between Logan and Fallon.

  “I, um, kissed Logan,” Fallon said, feeling the heat rise to her cheeks yet again. “And it—something happened. We… tingled.”

  “Interesting,” Ambrose said.

  Liana smiled broadly. “Never realized you were such a fast operator, Logan.”

  “I—but I—”

  “That was me,” Fallon said. “I made him kiss me.”

  “Not that I objected,” Logan added.

  “But Logan said it’s happened before,” Fallon said. “The tingling.”

  “Really?” Liana said, arching an eyebrow. “Logan?”

  Logan cleared his throat and looked away, embarrassed. “Not as if I haven’t kissed a girl before.”

  “You and Pamela tingled?” Liana pressed. “Or Diana?”

  Logan said something under his breath.

  “Speak up, boy,” Ambrose said.

  “That may have been a, uh, static shock from her braces.”

  “And what about Pamela?”

  “We had some fireworks,” Logan said defensively. “I mean, she was the first girl I ever kissed, so naturally…”

  “Don’t mind him,” Liana said to Fallon. “The tingling is significant.”

  Logan cleared his throat again. “You know, I should probably go help Barrett. Right? He said something about bringing him a turkey club.”

  “No need to be embarrassed, Logan,” Ambrose said.

  “I won’t be,” Logan said. “If everyone stops talking about my love life.”

  “Or lack thereof,” Liana said, grinning.

  “Jeez, I get less abuse from Barrett!”

  “Sorry, little brother,” Liana said. “I’ll try to restrain my inner Barrett.”

  Fallon pressed her index fingers against her temples and shook her head. “Look, this all sounds—wonderful, really. Well, not the stuff about Logan’s love life. The rest of it. All of it. But what does it mean? I don’t know how to do anything—any of that unbound or catalyst stuff. True, I have these dreams, prescient dreams, but it’s not as if I control them.”

  “You control your lips,” Ambrose said. “Right?”

  “Okay, sure,” Fallon said. “That’s one thing.”

  “Action and reaction,” Ambrose said. “Equally important. Talents may be active or reactive or passive, as with your prescient dreaming. But even dreaming may be aided and guided.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to do, or what you expect me to do,” Fallon said. “I’m confused—it’s all confusing.”

  “And yet you demanded the truth.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That was your choice,” Ambrose said. “You will make other choices. This is how you shape the clay of your potential.”

  “By every decision I make?”

  Ambrose shrugged. “Why should it not be so?”

  “I think I want—need to go home now,” Fallon said. “Can I just go home?”

  “Of course,” Ambrose said, rising from his chair. “As much as I enjoy your company and as much as Logan, apparently, enjoys your kisses—”

  “Leave me out of it!”

  “In any event, you are free to go.”

  From behind Fallon, another voice—a woman’s voice—demanded, “Who is she?”

  Chapter 15

  Fallon gasped, and her heart lurched in her chest like a startled deer in a meadow. She turned to face the woman, who wore a long, paint-stained smock, and clutched a dripping camel hair paintbrush in her trembling left hand.

  The woman’s long blond hair was in mild disarray and her hazel eyes had a wild cast to them. Her question hung in the air like a threat of violence or a plea for mercy. “Who is she?”

  Liana slipped by Fallon and wrapped a comforting arm around the older woman’s shoulders. “Fallon, this is my sister, Thalia,” she said carefully, in a soothing voice, as if she were afraid to agitate the woman.

  “Hi,” Fallon said. “You startled me.”

  Under the paint-smeared smock, Thalia wore a gray, long-sleeved T-shirt. She’d pushed the sleeves up to her elbows, exposing forearms decorated with the same strange, rune-like golden tattoos that Liana sported. Thalia’s arms, however, exhibited long fingernail scratches, one of them stippled with fresh blood. Almost as though, absent-mindedly, she’s been trying to remove the tattoos, Fallon thought. She’s… damaged.

  Thalia looked from Liana to Ambrose and back again. “Who is she?”

  “Fallon is a friend of Logan’s, from his new school,” Ambrose said, watching Thalia closely for any reaction to his words.

  Thalia looked at Fallon again. “Friend, but I…” She shook her head and glanced briefly at Logan. “More than friends.”

  Logan spread
his hands, palms up, as if to exonerate himself from Thalia’s perceived conspiracy. “Really, it was one kiss.”

  Thalia ignored him, slipped out from under Liana’s embrace, and walked toward Fallon. “I saw you!” Thalia whispered urgently. Forgotten, the wet paint brush slipped through her fingers and plopped to the floor, blotting the hardwood with a comet-shaped smudge of red paint. Thalia canted her head to the side, contemplating Fallon as if she were a different species. “Up there… alone. But I… saw you.”

  Fallon fought the urge to back away and duck out the nearest exit. She wanted to ask the others—“Is she violent?”—but was afraid the question would provoke the woman.

  Liana must have realized Fallon was on the verge of panic. She held up her hand and quietly said, “It’s okay.”

  Thalia raised her own hand—the hand that had been holding the paintbrush a moment ago—and reached toward Fallon’s face, but paused, inches away, her fingers trembling.

  “What—what do you mean?” Was I in a dream of hers? “Saw me how?”

  “Shine,” Thalia said with a look of awe on her pale face. “You… are. You shine. The light in the dark…. Beacon in the dark.” She smiled, but her lips quivered with the fragility of her comfort.

  On impulse—a fleeting, subconscious moment of trusting some unknown instinct deep inside—Fallon pressed Thalia’s trembling hand against her cheek. A rush of emotions flooded through Fallon’s mind, ricocheting around her consciousness with tiny jolts of elation and pain, triumph and failure, love and loss, comfort and fear, joy and anger, compassion and revulsion, confusion and emptiness and loneliness…

  Thalia’s hand had become cold as ice.

  Fallon shuddered but held on, hoping for… something—

  —until Thalia snatched her hand away!

  “Dark—dark—dark!” Thalia whispered rapidly. “All the dark, so dark. So dark, and it screams, you know. It screams because it’s angry. And it listens!” She swung her arm in a circle to encompass them all, fixing her wide-eyed gaze on each of them in turn. “Don’t—don’t ever let it hear you! That’s how it gets inside.” She wiggled her fingers beside her ears. “Rips you apart from inside.”

  Thalia shook her head as if to disassociate herself from her warnings. She looked back at Fallon again. “You’re different. Like that, like the light, but not like that. I don’t know why. You won’t hurt me, will you? Not like the light. It’s warm—” she shook her head “—but it blinds! It hurts!” Thalia had begun to sob softly. “Don’t hurt me, Fallon. Promise!”